Government

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. ~ Adam Smith

The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery. ~ Eugene Debs

While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years. ~ Abraham Lincoln

A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

They worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” ~ John of Patmos

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man. ~ William Beveridge

While all other Sciences have advanced, that of Government is at a stand; little better understood; little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago. ~ John Adams

We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. ~ John Adams

Government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end. ~ John Dickinson

To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be. ~ Henry George

What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else. ~ Tom Clancy

A limited democracy might indeed be the best protector of individual liberty and be better than any other form of limited government, but an unlimited democracy is probably worse than any other form of unlimited government, because its government loses the power even to do what it thinks right if any group on which its majority depends thinks otherwise. ~ Friedrich Hayek

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. ~ Friedrich Hayek

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power. The powers which modern democracy possesses would be even more intolerable in the hands of some small elite. ~ Friedrich Hayek

It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem. ~ Friedrich Hayek

If you have a government of good laws and bad men, you will have a bad government. For bad men will not be bound by good laws. ~ Robert LeFevre

Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for. ~ Adlai Stevenson

No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable without possessing a certain portion of order and stability. ~ James Madison

Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians, and most sensible governments in the past left moral faults alone. Instead, democratic citizenship in the twenty-first century means receiving a steam of improving 'messages' from authority. ~ Kenneth Minogue

Our rulers have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in their exercise of authority. They are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. We should never doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step toward totalitarianism. ~ Kenneth Minogue

Some people think that being in government for a long time is a bad thing. But the more you stay, the more you learn. I am now an expert in governance. ~ Yoweri Museveni

A government which cannot protect its humblest citizens from outrage and injury is unworthy of the name and ought not to command the support of a free people. ~ Charles E. Nash

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ~ Abraham Lincoln

We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems, nor do we want it to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. ~ Barack Obama

Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ~ Thomas Paine

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? ~ Ronald Reagan

A government is a body that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws within a civil, corporate, religious, academic, or other organization or group.

We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. ... Fear is the foundation of most governments...

In some parts of the world, states have collapsed as a result of internal and communal conflicts, depriving their citizens of any effective protection. Elsewhere, human security has been jeopardized by governments which refuse to act in the common interest, which persecute their opponents and punish innocent members of minority groups.

[Parsons] had witnessed the blinding overnight successes achieved by the government-by-terror totalitarianism of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. He had the foresight to see that [the United States of] America, once armed with the new powers of total destruction and surveillance that were sure to follow the swelling flood of new technologies, had the potential to become even more repressive unless its founding principles of individual liberty were religiously preserved and its leaders held accountable to them.

The danger is becoming greater. As the arsenals of the superpowers grow in size and sophistication and as other governments—perhaps even, in the future, dozens of governments—acquire these weapons, it may be only a matter of time before madness, desperation, greed or miscalculation lets loose the terrible force.

The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.

If it was possible for men who exercise their reason, to believe that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these Colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them has been granted to that body. But a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that Government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.

Richard Feynman, in "The Uncertainty of Values", in The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (1999)

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

The state is not a universal nor in itself an autonomous source of power. The state is nothing else but the effect, the profile, the mobile shape of a perpetual statification or statifications, in the sense of incessant transactions which modify, or move, or drastically change, or insidiously shift sources of finance, modes of investment, decision-making centers, forms and types of control, relationships between local powers, the central authority, and so on. In short, the state has no heart, as we well know, but not just in the sense that it has no feelings, either good or bad, but it has no heart in the sense that it has no interior. The state is nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities.

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.

James A. Garfield, letter to B. A. Hinsdale (21 April 1880), as published in The Nation's Hero – In Memoriam: The life of James Abram Garfield (1881) by Jonas Mills Bundy

Government doesn’t louse up everything, but it sure louses up a lot of what it promises to deliver... [G]overnment has an abysmal record of abusing the public’s trust, finances, and its own authority. Now some people want it to take on a bigger role?

To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be.

Henry George, Social Problems (1883), Ch. 17 : The Functions of Government

For just experience tells, in every soil, That those who think must govern those that toil.

Can humans exist without some people ruling and others being ruled? The founders of political science did not think so. "I put for a general inclination of mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death," declared Thomas Hobbes. Because of this innate lust for power, Hobbes thought that life before (or after) the state was a "war of every man against every man"—"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Was Hobbes right? Do humans have an unquenchable desire for power that, in the absence of a strong ruler, inevitably leads to a war of all against all? To judge from surviving examples of bands and villages, for the greater part of prehistory our kind got along quite well without so much as a paramount chief, let alone the all-powerful English leviathan King and Mortal God, whom Hobbes believed was needed for maintaining law and order among his fractious countrymen.

Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going (1989)

Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.

A limited democracy might indeed be the best protector of individual liberty and be better than any other form of limited government, but an unlimited democracy is probably worse than any other form of unlimited government, because its government loses the power even to do what it thinks right if any group on which its majority depends thinks otherwise. If Mrs. Thatcher said that free choice is to be exercised more in the market place than in the ballot box, she has merely uttered the truism that the first is indispensable for individual freedom, while the second is not: free choice can at least exist under a dictatorship that can limit itself but not under the government of an unlimited democracy which cannot.

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.

The "Austrian" economists, more consistently than those of any other school, have criticized nearly all forms of government intervention in the market — especially inflation, price controls, and schemes for redistribution of wealth or incomes because they recognize that these always lead to erosions of incentives, to distortions of production, to shortages, to demoralization, and to similar consequences deplored even by the originators of the schemes.

Government is the most dangerous institution known to man. Throughout history it has violated the rights of men more than any individual or group of individuals could do: it has killed people, enslaved them, sent them to forced labor and concentration camps, and regularly robbed and pillaged them of the fruits of their expended labor. Unlike individual criminals, government has the power to arrest and try; unlike individual criminals, it can surround and encompass a person totally, dominating every aspect of one's life, so that one has no recourse from it but to leave the country (and in totalitarian nations even that is prohibited).

The only proper role of government, according to libertarians, is that of the protector of the citizen against aggression by other individuals. The government, of course, should never initiate aggression; its proper role is as the embodiment of the retaliatory use of force against anyone who initiates its use.

It is not democracy but unlimited government that is objectionable, and I do not see why the people should not learn to limit the scope of majority rule as well as that of any other form of government. At any rate, the advantages of democracy as a method of peaceful change and of political education seem to be so great compared with those of any other system that I can have no sympathy with the antidemocratic strain of conservatism. It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem.

By art is created that great Leviathan called a commonwealth, or state, (in Latin civitas) which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates, and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members, are the strength; salus populi (the peoples safety) its business; counselors, by whom all things needful for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the “let us make man,” pronounced by God in the creation.

[T]hat to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.

Jesus knew who really rules the world. On one occasion, Satan “showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” Then Satan promised Jesus: “All these things I will give you if you fall [or, bow] down and do an act of worship to me.” (Matthew 4:8, 9; Luke 4:5, 6) Ask yourself, ‘If those kingdoms didn’t belong to Satan, could he have offered them to Jesus?’ No. All governments belong to Satan.

But when they bring YOU in before public assemblies and government officials and authorities, do not become anxious about how or what YOU will speak in defense or what YOU will say; for the holy spirit will teach YOU in that very hour the things YOU ought to say.

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast.

Governments are nothing more or less than gigantic criminal conspiracies, overgrown street gangs with no claims whatsoever to legitimacy. They are funded by theft and the basis of all their operations is aggression. They're no more entitled to keep their activities secret than any other gaggle of murderers, rapists and thieves is.

Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible.

Robert LeFevre, essay "Aggression is Wrong" (1963) published by Rampart College.

That no human ruler can claim the same degree of allegiance that God claims; that God's kingship or suzerainty relativizes all human regimes; that all human political arrangements, even the most just and humane, fall short of the kingdom of God: these are ideas that have reverberated over the centuries and into our own time.

Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison, speech in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 2 December 1829, as quoted in The Writings of James Madison: 1819-1836 (1910), ed. Galliard Hunt, p. 361

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

If a government proclaims its interest in protecting the environment but allocates little money or efforts toward that goal, environmental protection is not, in fact, the government's purpose. Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals.

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

Our rulers are theoretically "our" representatives, but they are busy turning us into the instruments of the projects they keep dreaming up. The business of governments, one might think, is to supply the framework of law within which we may pursue happiness on our own account. Instead, we are constantly being summoned to reform ourselves. Debt, intemperance, and incompetence in rearing our children are no doubt regettable, but they are vices, and if left to generate their own consequences, vices soon lead to the pain that corrects. Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians, and most sensible governments in the past left moral faults alone. Instead, democratic citizenship in the twenty-first century means receiving a steam of improving "messages" from authority. Some may forgive these intrusions because they are so well intentioned. Who would defend prejudice, debt, or excessive drinking? The point, however, is that our rulers have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in their exercise of authority. They are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. We should never doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step toward totalitarianism.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Part I, Chapter 11, “Vom neuen Götzen” (“The New Idol”). Published in four parts between 1883 and 1891 Another translation: “But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.”

A government which cannot protect its humblest citizens from outrage and injury is unworthy of the name and ought not to command the support of a free people.

A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.” It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadows about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

That’s precisely what the founders left us: the power to adapt to changing times. They left us the keys to a system of self-government – the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone. To stretch railroads and electricity and a highway system across a sprawling continent. To educate our people with a system of public schools and land grant colleges, including Ohio State. To care for the sick and the vulnerable, and provide a basic level of protection from falling into abject poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth. To conquer fascism and disease; to visit the Moon and Mars; to gradually secure our God-given rights for all our citizens, regardless of who they are, what they look like, or who they love. We, the people, chose to do these things together. Because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition. Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can’t be trusted. We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems, nor do we want it to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. The founders trusted us with this awesome authority. We should trust ourselves with it, too. Because when we don’t, when we turn away and get discouraged and abdicate that authority, we grant our silent consent to someone who’ll gladly claim it.

We have moved from an age in which government leaders sought to do what was best for the people to one in which the political leadership is convinced it knows what is best for the people, whether they like it or not.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

Ronald Reagan, in his First Inaugural Address, Washington, D. C. (20 January 1981)

In a free society, the primary role of government is to protect the God-given, inalienable, inherent rights of its citizens, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[S]ome people -- most, it seems -- will, under some circumstances, do anything someone in authority tells them to. ... Government institutions, like most humans, have a reflexive reaction to the exposure of internal corruption and wrongdoing: No matter how transparent the effort, their first response is to lie, conceal and cover up. Also like human beings, once an institution has embraced a particular lie in support of a particular coverup, it will forever proclaim its innocence.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

With the exception of the writ of habeas corpus, a privilege not required under the Jewish government, simply because it did not allow of imprisonment, there is not a single feature of free government that is not distinctly developed in the Bible.

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

[Administration] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom restrained from acting, such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd.

From the time that the heads of government assumed an external and nominal Christianity, men began to invent all the impossible, cunningly devised theories by means of which Christianity can be reconciled with government. But no honest and serious-minded man of our day can help seeing the incompatibility of true Christianity — the doctrine of meekness, forgiveness of injuries, and love — with government, with its pomp, acts of violence, executions, and wars. The profession of true Christianity not only excludes the possibility of recognizing government, but even destroys its very foundations.

The Earth can no longer take this attack. We can no longer allow this thing to continue when it’s polluting the air, it’s polluting the water, polluting our food. ... The Earth gives us life, not the American government. The earth gives us life, not the multi-national corporate government. The Earth gives us life. We need to have the Earth. We must have it, otherwise our life will be no more. So we must resist what they do.

Public government, what you think of as the government—its job is just to keep the citizenry in line, make sure they don’t make trouble for the real government. Real government is private government. Its job is helping rich people to become more so.

And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world.

Honoré de Balzac, Bureaucracy (vol. 12 in The Works of Honoré de Balzac), p. 13 (1901, reprinted 1971)

If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means—to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal—would bring terrible retribution.

We cannot meet it [the threat of dictatorship] if we turn this country into a wishy-washy imitation of totalitarianism, where every man's hand is out for pabulum and virile creativeness has given place to the patronizing favor of swollen bureaucracy.

Vannevar Bush, speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 5, 1949, as reported by The New York Times, December 6, 1949, p. 12

Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,—every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,—can such a form of so-called "Government" continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there.

For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.

Benjamin Disraeli, letter to Lord Grey de Wilton, October 3, 1873. W. F. Monypenny and George Earl Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, vol. 5, chapter 7, p. 262 (1920). Lord Grey was standing for Parliament, and was a personal friend of Disraeli's, who "wrote for publication … a full-blooded letter, conceived in the hustings spirit, but it only restated, in pointed fashion, charges which Disraeli had often brought against Ministers in public speeches and … [in] the House of Commons. A vehement outcry was, however, raised against its tone and language; and even many of his own party attributed to this indiscretion Grey de Wilton's failure by a small majority" to win the seat. Disraeli "was quite impenitent" (p. 262). A footnote indicates that the "plundering and blundering" phrase had been used before by Disraeli, in Coningsby, book 2, chapter 4

The American wage earner and the American housewife are a lot better economists than most economists care to admit. They know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

Gerald R. Ford, remarks to a joint session of Congress, August 12, 1974. The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford, 1974, p. 6. Ford was quoted as having expressed the same idea nearly fifteen years earlier: "If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have." John F. Parker, "If Elected, I Promise…," Stories and Gems of Wisdom by and About Politicians, p. 193 (1960). No source is given.

In a political sense, there is one problem that currently underlies all of the others. That problem is making Government sufficiently responsive to the people. If we don't make government responsive to the people, we don't make it believable. And we must make government believable if we are to have a functioning democracy.

The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other … is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been formed with seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist.

Fellow-citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne! Mercy and truth shall go before his face! Fellow-citizens! God reigns and the government at Washington still lives.

James A. Garfield, address to calm a crowd in New York City, April 17, 1865, two days after the death of President Lincoln. Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield, vol. 1, p. 383 (1925). Smith notes that while the tradition of this speech was so well established during Garfield's own lifetime as to become "a familiar commonplace," no clipping of it exists among Garfield's papers, nor did Garfield himself, so far as known, refer to it in later times.

A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity, but a weak one is odious in the former, and contemptible in the latter.

George Grenville, speech against the motion for expelling John Wilkes, House of Commons, February 3, 1769. The Parliamentary History of England, printed by T. C. Hansard, vol. 16, col. 570 (1813). "Though Grenville had taken a prominent part in the early measures against Wilkes, he opposed his expulsion from the House of Commons on 3 Feb. 1769, in probably the ablest speech that he ever made." The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 8, p. 559

The system … is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit.

Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, ed. Benjamin F. Wright, no. 85, p. 544 (1961). Hamilton acknowledged the imperfect nature of the government that would result from adopting the Constitution, but he felt it imprudent "to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs … in the chimerical pursuit of the perfect plan."

But, sir, I have said I do not dread these corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain, and control them; but there is a corporation we may all well dread. That corporation is the Federal Government.

Far more important to me is, that I should be loyal to what I regard as the law of my political life, which is this: a belief that that country is best governed, which is least governed …

George Hoadly, remarks in Ohio constitutional convention, June 19, 1873. Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Third Constitutional Convention of Ohio…, p. 436 (1873)

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life—the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

I confess I have the same fears for our South American brethren; the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training, and for these they will require time and probably much suffering.

I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.

I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I don't like to say this and wish I didn't have to add these words to make it clear but I will—regardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age.

Before my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure. The outcome is by no means certain.

John F. Kennedy, annual message to Congress on the State of the Union, January 30, 1961. The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961, p. 19

Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting out to him—"Blondin, stand up a little straighter—Blondin, stoop a little more—go a little faster—lean a little more to the north—lean a little more to the south?" No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we'll get you safe across.

Abraham Lincoln, reply to critics of his administration, 1864. Francis B. Carpenter, "Anecdotes and Reminiscences of President Lincoln" in Henry Jarvis Raymond, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln…, p. 752 (1865). Carpenter, a portrait artist, lived in the White House for six months beginning February 1864, to paint the president and the entire Cabinet. His relations with the president became of an "intimate character," and he was permitted "the freedom of his private office at almost all hours,… privileged to see and know more of his daily life" than most people. He states that he "endeavored to embrace only those [anecdotes] which bear the marks of authenticity. Many … I myself heard the President relate; others were communicated to me by persons who either heard or took part in them" (p. 725). Blondin (real name Jean François Gravelet) was a French tightrope walker who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1855, 1859, and 1860.

I am struggling to maintain the government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to prevent others from overthrowing it.

There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.

Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. W. T. Roche, address at Washington, Kansas, April 9, 1942: "These words were spoken by Lincoln, then a Congressman, in defense of his condemnation of President Polk for provoking the Mexican War." Congressional Record, April 15, 1942, vol. 88, Appendix, p. A1493. Not found in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (1953)

While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.

Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all around us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our press is still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty of association, why our representative institutions still abide in all their strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions we stood firmly by our government in its peril; and, if I am asked why we stood by our government in its peril, when men all around us were engaged in pulling governments down, I answer, It was because we knew that though our government was not a perfect government, it was a good government, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to the gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reason and public opinion.

The free system of government we have established is so congenial with reason, with common sense, and with a universal feeling, that it must produce approbation and a desire of imitation, as avenues may be found for truth to the knowledge of nations.

James Madison, letter to Pierre-Étienne du Ponceau, January 23, 1826. James Madison papers, Library of Congress. These words are inscribed in the Madison Memorial Hall, Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Thus, a people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.

When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society (as already observed) is not yet ripe for representative government.

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.

William Penn, in his Preface to the First Frame of Government [constitution] for Pennsylvania, which was formally adopted in England, April 25, 1682. The William Penn Tercentenary Committee, Remember William Penn, 2d ed., p. 81 (1945). The committee noted that the preface was perhaps "Penn's best expression of his ideas of government" (p. 80)

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

Attributed to William Penn. Virginia Ely, I Quote, p. 189 (1947). Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). Numerous sources cite this remark but it has not been found in Penn's writings.

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the virtue.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon. From an English translation of his Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle (1851) quoted in James Joll, The Anarchists, chapter 3, p. 78 (1964)

There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don't even have to exaggerate.

Will Rogers. P.J. O'Brien, Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom, chapter 9, p. 157 (1935)

Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, speech accepting renomination for the presidency, June 27, 1936. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936, p. 235 (1938). Senator John F. Kennedy quoted these words of Roosevelt's in a campaign speech in Houston, Texas, September 12, 1960. Freedom of Communications, final report of the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, part 1, p. 203 (1961). Senate Rept. 87–994

History proves that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments, but out of weak and helpless ones. If by democratic methods people get a government strong enough to protect them from fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds; but if they do not, they grow impatient. Therefore, the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.

Jonathan Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph, sermon, at parish church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, London, February 19, 1773. A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, p. 11 (1773). Reprinted in English Defenders of American Freedoms, 1774–1778, ed. Paul H. Smith, p. 22–23 (1972)

Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.

I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, first paragraph, Walden and Civil Disobedience, ed. Owen Thomas, p. 224 (1966). This essay was first published in 1849. The motto Thoreau referred to was almost certainly that of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, a literary-political monthly: "The best government is that which governs least." Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed a similar sentiment in his essay "Politics:" "Hence the less government we have the better—the fewer laws and the less confided power." Essays: Second Series, in The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 1, p. 302 (1929)

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Attributed to George Washington. Frank J. Wilstach, A Dictionary of Similes, 2d ed., p. 526 (1924). This can be found with minor variations in wording and in punctuation, and with "fearful" for "troublesome," in George Seldes, The Great Quotations, p. 727 (1966). Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). In his most recent book of quotations, The Great Thoughts (1985), Seldes says, p. 441, col. 2, footnote, this paragraph "although credited to the 'Farewell' [address] cannot be found in it. Lawson Hamblin, who owns a facsimile, and Horace Peck, America's foremost authority on quotations, informed me this paragraph is apocryphal."

Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it;… It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty?… No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again…. they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional American liberty.

Daniel Webster, "The Character of Washington," speech delivered in Washington, D.C., at a public dinner in honor of the centennial birthday of George Washington, February 22, 1832. The Works of Daniel Webster, 10th ed., vol. 1, p. 231 (1857)

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.

Daniel Webster, at a reception in Bangor, Maine, August 25, 1835. The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, vol. 2, p. 165 (1903)

Trust nothing to the enthusiasm of the people. Give them a strong and a just, and, if possible, a good, government; but, above all, a strong one.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, letter to Lieutenant-General Lord William Bentinck, December 24, 1811. John Gurwood, Selections from the Dispatches and General Orders of Field Marshal, the Duke of Wellington, p. 545 (1851)

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.

John Sharp Williams, Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions, p. 49 (1913). Lecture delivered at Columbia University, New York City, 1912

Too much law was too much government; and too much government was too little individual privilege,—as too much individual privilege in its turn was selfish license.

The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.

John Adams, address to the citizens of Westmoreland Co., Virginia. Answered July 11, 1798. See also Thomas Cooper, Some information respecting America (1794). In Report of a Meeting of the Mass. Historical Society by Samuel A. Green (May 9, 1901)

The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not.

Yesterday the greatest question was decided which was ever debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that those United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.

Francis Bacon, De Sapientia Veterum (1609). 6. Pan, sive Natura. Sometimes translated, "All sceptres are crooked atop." Referring to the shepherd's crook of Pan, and implying that government needs to be roundabout in method.

It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.

I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for Reform,—thirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party.

John Bright. Speech at Birmingham Town Hall, April 28, 1859. Attributed to Joseph Hume by Sir Charles Dilke in the Morning Herald, Aug. 2, 1899. Probably said by William IV to Earl Gray, in an interview, Nov. 17, 1830. Found in H. B.'s Cartoons, No. 93, pub. Nov. 26, 1830. Also in a letter of Princess Lieven, Nov., 1830. See Warren's Ten Thousand a Year. (Inscribed on the banner of Tittlebat Titmouse.) Referred to in Molesworth's Hist. of the Reform Bill of 1832, p. 98

Well, will anybody deny now that the Government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government in the world at this hour? And for this simple reason, that it is based on the will, and the good will, of an instructed people.

A power has arisen up in the Government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.

John C. Calhoun, in the U.S. Senate (May 28, 1836). "Cohesive power of public plunder." As quoted by Grover Cleveland

Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons, set to consult about "business," with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them. Was there ever, since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any "business" accomplished in these circumstances?

Thomas Carlyle, Latter Day Pamphlets, Parliaments (referring to the relation of the Parliament to the British people, June 1, 1850)

There are but two ways of paying debt—increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

And the first thing I would do in my government, I would have nobody to control me, I would be absolute; and who but I: now, he that is absolute, can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes, can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure, can be content; and he that can be content, has no more to desire; so the matter's over.

Who's in or out, who moves this grand machine, Nor stirs my curiosity nor spleen: Secrets of state no more I wish to know Than secret movements of a puppet show: Let but the puppets move, I've my desire, Unseen the hand which guides the master wire.

The communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness which assiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of misrule.

The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.

Fellow-citizens: Clouds and darkness are around Him; His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds; justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne; mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens! God reigns and the Government at Washington lives.

James A. Garfield, address from the balcony of the New York Custom House to a crowd, after news of President Lincoln's assassination

When constabulary duty's to be done A policeman's lot is not a happy one.

Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfill. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elias Shipman and others of New Haven. July 12, 1801. Paraphrased by John B. McMaster in his History of the People of the United States, II. 586. One sentence will undoubtedly be remembered till our republic ceases to exist. 'No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying,' he observed, 'as to put the right man in the right place.'.

This end (Robespierre's theories) was the representative sovereignty of all the citizens concentrated in an election as extensive as the people themselves, and acting by the people, and for the people in an elective council, which should be all the government.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free.

Abraham Lincoln, speech, June 17, 1858. See W. O. Stoddard's Life of Lincoln

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one.

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, speech at Gettysburg. 1863. The phrase "of the people, for the people and by the people" is not original with Lincoln. There is a tradition that the phrase, "The Bible shall be for the government of the people, for the people and by the people," appears in the preface of the Wyclif Bible of 1384, or in the Hereford Bible, or in a pamphlet of the period treating of that version. See Notes and Queries, Feb. 12, 1916, p. 127. Albert Mathews, of Boston, examined the reprint of 1850 of the Wyclif Bible, and finds no reference to it. There is a preface to the Old and the New Testament, and a prologue to each book, probably written by John Purvey.

The government of the Union, then, is emphatically and truly a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them and for their benefit.

The all-men power; government over all, by all, and for the sake of all.

Chief Justice John Marshall. Pamphlet. The Relation of Slavery to a Republican Form of Government. Speech delivered at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention (May 26, 1858). Pamphlet used by Lincoln when preparing speeches. This phrase was underlined by him.

To make a bank, was a great plot of state; Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

Attributed to Axel von Oxenstierna. Buchmann, Geflügelte Wörte, attributes it as likely to Pope Julius III, also to Orselaer, tutor to the sons of a Markgraf of Baden. Lord Chatham claims it for Pope Alexander VI, Jules or Leo, in Letter to Lord Shelburne, Jan. 25, 1775. Conrad von Bennington, Dutch Statesman, also given credit. Quoted by Dr. Arbuthnot, letter to Swift, 1732–3

There is what I call the American idea. * * * This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy,—that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.

First there is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed, and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation.

The schoolboy whips his taxed top, the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., flings himself back on his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.

We preach Democracy in vain while Tory and Conservative can point to the opposite side of the Atlantic and say: "There are Nineteen millions of the human race free absolutely, every man heir to the throne, governing themselves—the government of all, by all, for all; but instead of being a consistent republic it is one widespread confederacy of free men for the enslavement of a nation of another complexion."

When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!

[He would do his duty as he saw it] without regard to scraps of paper called constitutions.

King William to the Prussian Diet disregarding the refusal of the Representatives to grant appropriations. Harper's Weekly, March 26, 1887. Article on Emperor William I, of Germany

No man ever saw the people of whom he forms a part. No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States. Its personnel extends through all the nations, and across the seas, and into every corner of the world in the persons of the representatives of the United States in foreign capitals and in foreign centres of commerce.